#interactive19

I wanted to share the search engine I nowadays use. It’s called DuckDuckGo, and it’s just one of the things you can do to protect your privacy. However, in the era of all the apps, phones, websites, and maps we use I know it’s impossible to hide everything I still believe we can do something.

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that protects its users’ privacy by not storing or saving the IP addresses, does not log user information, and uses cookies only when required.  Gabriel Weinberg, the creator of DuckDuckGo, states: "By default, DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information. That is our privacy policy in a nutshell."

DDG doesn’t do user profiling, and that gives all the same results for every user.  It emphasises returning the best results, rather than the most results, generating those results from over 400 individual sources.

It’s very user-friendly and looks a lot like Google; simple and fast. You can choose your location, web/pictures/videos/news, or time and safe search.

If you are interested, give it a try!

The first week of Interactive Media was a total blur. I am just now catching my breath. I have a couple ideas floating around in my head for my independent personal project, and both have to deal with veganism and eco-friendly tourism. I am excited to embark on the second week of this program to keep learning, growing and evolving. 

As a Creative Writing major, this program is totally out of my comfort zone, but interesting nonetheless. I am really not a “techy” person, so that aspect of this class is slightly intimidating. Yet, I am comforted to know that I do not have to invent a video game to excel at this course. (Yay!) 

Onwards,

So this week we had an interactive story workshop with Gill White, and it was lots of fun. I especially enjoyed the part of Sherlock Holmes and the Internet of Things, the murder part.

The first part was about an object that we found meaningful and why. It was interesting and useful as well, but I enjoyed creating murder scenes more because we got to do things more.

In a way thinking about objects was more useful that we learned how and why something is meaningful for someone. No matter how small and insignificant it might look for other people but for the owner it’s not just the object, it’s everything that connects the object to the owner. It tells a lot about the person. I chose the TAL-1 star telescope that I bought when I was 12 years old, so I have had it for a LOOOOONG time :D

There are only very few objects that I find very meaningful for myself. Most of my stuff is just necessary, or I store it in my mum’s storage because I will get it back and don’t need to buy new ones. A few other meaningful items are my silver heart-shaped neckless that my mum gave to me when I turned 8 and another jewellery that all, me, my mother, and my sister have.

But this star telescope was and still is something that connects me with this other world. I can’t tell how many cold nights I spend in my mum’s back garden in the winter, looking at Jupiter and its moons, Saturn and its rings, or trying to find star clusters. It was so much fun. And all of this tells something about me as a person and these kinds of things I, as a screenwriter, can use in my stories.

The murder part was more just fun. Useful in a sense that it was a way to find inspiration or just to work on how to create a story, murder scene, back stories and clues. And also to learn how the same clue can mean so different things to different people.

I have a fake account on Twitter and once I tweeted 200 tweets in 10 days. It was so hard!

It was part of my creative writing course that I took. It was two weeks intensive course, and we had to write in character. In a way, we wrote “our” story on WordPress, had two accounts on Twitter and Instagram and we had to give a presentation as our character. Her Twitter account was @helenilove_ and Instagram @helenilovethemost. The story can be found in https://itsmehelenblog.wordpress.com/ She was a woman from Eastern Germany called Helen Svalberg, now in her 50′s. She lived in Cape Town, South Africa. She left Germany in the 70′s, ran away from home at the age of 16 and travelled around Europe before ended up in southern Africa.

It was interesting to create a person and a story through social media and connect that with a story. Helen is based on an actual person I met in Botswana. She owned the only fancy restaurant in Francistown, was in her late 50′s, ran away from East Berlin when she was 20 and married an Afrikaan who took her to South Africa, she divorced him after a year and since then has lived in several African countries. Barbara was her name. She was a funny person. Everyone knew she was sleeping with everyone’s husbands but because she owned the only fancy restaurant in the town women stayed quiet. True story.

Nowadays I use Twitter to follow some news channels, screenwriters, and some funny things like my ultimate favourite VeryFinnishProblems  @SoVeryFinnish that proves that Finns know how to laugh at themselves. Fine. It’s created by a British who lives in Finland but anyway...

ha ha ha ha

hahaha

ha

So I can enjoy Twitter. I can even use it if I have a fake account. Which is interesting by the way. I feel like I can be “myself” when I’m pretending to be someone else. I believe it says more about me than it does about social media. I also had a fake account on Tinder once. That’s a funny story, but maybe next time!

So a little update about my individual project. I decided to go with an accent app. I started to find several different hiking apps adds on my Instagram feed. Is my phone listening to me?!?! :D Also, my group was very supportive of the accent app.

I feel this app would be simple enough to develop during this module and it also interests me. It could be both for fun and for more professional use, such as for actors or people who really want to change their accent, both native speakers and foreigners.

The app would have a free version as well as a “premium” version. It would work similarly as language learning apps such as Duolingo or Speakly. It would give vocabulary what a certain accent/areas/countries use. E.g. South Africa / Australia / UK. There would be a part for idioms and saying what people who use this accent use. But the main focus would be how to pronounce words according to that certain accent.

The user could only learn a few sentences (free version) or go more deeply into the accent by learning more details.

The user would learn it by seeing how the words are written and hearing how they are pronounced. There would be short videos teachers explaining differences of “o” sound and how your mouth and tongue should be when using that sound etc.

I do realise that I seem to be a very negative person according to my blogs! Always ranting about how I get frustrated and angry! But I’m really not. I’m just a bit out of my comfort zone. My family got our first desktop computer in 1995, and it came with some games, and I did play some of them. They were very very simple. We also had some games on disks, but mainly I used these history, science and space “games” that weren’t really games but just pictures, texts, short videos and animations. A few times I played something at my friends’ house, and even if I enjoyed it, it wasn’t something I got excited about. For me, they seem like a waste of time unless there’s something you can learn or gain that benefits you. I know it sounds unfair since I read fiction books and watch films, but mainly I just don’t see what’s the point of playing video games.

I understand it’s a huge industry and there are all kinds of games for everyone. And I understand the fascination about the games. I admit that they do look great. I’m just not into them. I tried to find some reasons why people don’t like video games. Here are some answers I found;

1. They are time-consuming

2. They don’t like playing alone

3. Games are too difficult

4. Games are too expensive

5. Games are too violent

6. Games are for children

7. They never actually tried playing before

8. They are too lazy

9. They don’t like the game industry

10. They don’t find them productive

11. They think it’s unhealthy to play

12. Games make people more violent and or aggressive

There are a couple of reasons that I agree with, such as, that games are too expensive, time-consuming, not healthy or that they are not productive. I also hate when some of my friends play games on their phones and totally ignore what’s happening around them. Pokemon go is one example. A friend of mine came to Edinburgh to visit me, and all she did was walked around, not looking but just following the game on her phone.

If I understood right a game we are supposed to explore this week is called Ingress and it has a similar idea behind it. So you walk around using your surroundings as a platform, and you need to find portals. Then you collect them, protect them and attack them. It sounds interactive and fun, especially if it’s played with other people. For me, the videos I watched on YouTube looked like a board game taken outside. 

Anyway. I DO play some games. And I know I can get addicted, so maybe it is also a conscious choice that I try not to play too much. I mainly play games on my phone. One of my ultimate favourites has been Angry Birds, several different ones. And I know why it’s so addictive (or any that kind of simple games); you get frustrated that you lose your lives or any help what you had. You might have some extra powers at first, but the first levels are so easy that you don’t need them. The time the levels get hard these powers are not enough, and you use them at once or very quickly. There is always a way to earn them for free, but it takes time. So then, you go on AppStore and you buy. And once you buy them, it’s easier to buy some more gold coins or whatever.

I just played, or should I say ‘tried’ to play, Exoriare. It was my first experience playing an Alternative Reality Game and it was, to put it mildly, challenging! 

I have just spent the last half hour trying - and failing - to instruct someone (?) to do something (?) for some reason.

Our exchange went something like this:

Exoriare: You are standing in an open field, west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

Me: Open Mailbox.

Exoriare: \\ you can’t do that right now. //

Me: Go in House.

Exoriare: \\ you can’t do that right now. //

Me: Look in window?

Exoriare: \\ you can’t do that right now. //

Me: Call an Uber?

Exoriare: \\ you can’t do that right now. //

Me: Order pizza?

Exoriare: \\ you can’t do that right now. //

Me: Shoot me!

Exoriare: \\ all you have to do is find the red button. There is one in the house. //

Me: Oh FFS, you just told me I can’t go in the house!!!

Exoriare: \\ you can’t do that right now. //

Me: ARGGHHHH!

Frustrated but determined to work it out, I googled ‘tips and walkthroughs for Exoriare’ but the results were useless. Then I went back and ‘skimmed’ the Exoriare graphic novel for a clue to the game, and while the graphics are really strong ...

I remembered how I just.can’t.stand.comic.sans.font and couldn’t absorb any of the information in the captions.

So, in summary, I’m clearly not the target audience for this game. Unless, the game’s intention is to drive people insane, in which case … BINGO!

Alright. .............. So. My project is. I don’t know. I know some people struggle with the same thing as me that they don’t have a clear picture of what they want to do or what they can do for this project. I have some ideas or topics that I find interesting, but I feel that I’m not either smart enough or I don’t have enough imagination to make the idea something new and different or funny and useful.

I started listing topics and ideas I find interesting;

- Hiking app that connects people interested in hiking.

- Writing app that somehow gives feedback, exercises etc. to writers

- Politics

- An app that has a database so a screenwriter could check if a scene they are writing already exists

- Practise a new accent app (or get rid of your own accent) 

- Brain games

Then I started to think if I have some problems that I want to fix in my life. Many obviously, but I couldn’t connect those problems with new app ideas. There is an app for my issues, not that I really use them because I would need to pay and I don’t want to. Or I would use them if I had money to travel, buy certain products etc. So app for making money :D?

I love dogs. So maybe a dog app? But there are so many of them already. I just don’t know how to make it different.

Anyway, I think I am concentrating on a couple of ideas, and they are; the hiking app, writing ap, and an accent app. Accent one because I think that could be funny! Writing app might be a bit too complicated.

The hiking app would be a mix of Couchsurfing, TripAdvisor and Tinder. You could see the best hiking routes in your area, the weather, the conditions of the routes, how many people are there (using the app) if someone wants to hike together if someone has problems etc. You could upload pictures, have chats, exchange some details.

The writing app you would give feedback, partner up with other writers, do some exercises, read articles, watch videos, chat with people, and publish your texts.

The accent app would be very simple. You choose the language e.g. English and then the accent you want to learn e.g. Texas. Or you could choose an accent you want to get rid of e.g. German accent and it would give you the “problems” that make you sound like you sound and the advice that would make you sound more like you want to sound.